As Thomas takes the abuse, gets a feel for the geography, and learns to read between the lines on loosely defined doublespeak like "in development," he becomes fed up. He also realizes how easy it would be to accomplish the hijacking caper that gives this film its name. Although certain elements of the film do have that it's-funny-because-it's-true quality, the film has a tendency to replay the joke until it ceases to be funny. The best performance comes from Mark Metcalf, who seems most authentic as an overblown producer with an ego as big as his budgets. Thomas, on the other hand, seems to have the same expression on his face most of the time, and Scott Thompson's cackling production coordinator feels way too forced, particularly with the cackles.

Hijacking Hollywood is decidedly low budget, even going so far as to have an official Web site with Geocites listed on the video box, when hijackinghollywood.com is (at the time of this writing) available for registration and would cost the producers as little as $300 to register and run for two years. --Greg Bulmash